The second week of the 2026 World Bridge Series featured the Open Teams for the Rosenblum Cup, the Women's Teams for the McConnell Cup, the Jacek Pszczola Swiss Teams, open to teams eliminated from the Rosenblum after the Swiss stage and new teams, and into which players on teams eliminated in the Rosenblum rounds of 64, 32, 16, and 8 and the McConnell KO stages could drop, and the Week 2 BAM, into which teams could drop from the Rosenblum Semifinal and after any stage of the Pszczola. There were also Open and Women's Pairs. 38 USBF players (by my possibly erroneous count) earned medals in these events:
ROSENBLUM:
GOLD went to FLEISHER, USBF players Marty Fleisher and Chip Martel and NPC Jan Martel, with Thomas Bessis and Cedric Lorenzini from France and Sjoert Brink and Sebastian (Bas) Drijver from the Netherlands.
SILVER went to ROSENTHAL, USBF players Andrew Rosenthal, Aaron Silverstein, and Chris Willenken, with by Christian Bakke and Boye Brogeland from Norway and Martin Schaltz from Denmark.
BRONZE: In this tournament there was no third-fourth playoff, the bronze medal was awarded to the 2 teams that lost in the Semifinals:
DEEP FINESSE, USBF players Bill Bailey, Josh Donn, Dan Korbel, and Roger Lee, and NPC Arti Bhargava, with Alon Birman and Dror Padon from Israel, and ZIMMERMANN, the only team in the medals which had no USBF players.
MCCONNELL:
GOLD went to BAKER, USBF players Lynn Baker, Olivia Shireson, Cecilia Dwyer Rimstedt, and Sandra Rimstedt, joined by with Katarzyna Dufrat and Justyna Zmuda from Poland.
PSCZCOLA:
GOLD went to the all-USBF SILVER SURFERS: players Mark Bartusek, Chris Compton, Kevin Bathurst, John Hurd, Vince Demuy, John Kranyak, and NPC Donna Compton.
SILVER went to a team from Poland.
BRONZE went to another all USBF team: SIMSON: players Doug Simson, Eric Rodwell, David Grainger, Joel Wooldridge, Finn Kolesnik, and Eddie Wold, and NPC Bob Morris.
Second Week BAM:
Gold went to DEEP FINESSE: USBF players Bill Bailey, Josh Donn, Dan Korbel, and Roger Lee, and NPC Arti Bhargava with Alon Birman and Dror Padon from Israel;
SILVER went to a team from Belgium;
BRONZE went to a mostly Chinese team with one USBF player: Ming Sheng.
USBF Players also starred in the Open Pairs, which was won by a Polish pair, Piotr Lutostanski and Krzysztof Buras: Steve Weinstein and David Bakhshi from England won Silver and Adam Kaplan & Radu Nistor Bronze.
Pictures coming as soon as I can find good ones. If you have one,
